


Under the Greenwood Tree

by chaletian



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Awesome Ladies Ficathon, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-21
Updated: 2010-09-21
Packaged: 2017-10-12 01:58:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/119535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaletian/pseuds/chaletian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's old, this place, she can feel its age, as if the trees and rocks and plants have roots wrapped twice round the world and once around her, all of them bound together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under the Greenwood Tree

There's a battle, of course. It's how these things are done. But that's irrelevant - boys with their toys ( _she remembers Arthur as a small child, smaller than her, his expression fierce as he practises with a wooden sword that Gwen's father made him_ ) - and it's here that matters. It's old, this place, she can feel its age, as if the trees and rocks and plants have roots wrapped twice round the world and once around her, all of them bound together.

It's old, this place, and it's thick with brambles and nettles and oak and alder, beech and poplar. It's old, this place, and she stands in the shadows and waits.

It's here that matters.

When Merlin comes ( _he used to blush when she spoke to him_ ), it's dark, and she's knows it's here that matters.

"You don't have to do this, Morgana," he says, and she laughs, oh how she laughs, and she feels the trees and the rocks and the plants laugh with her ( _they're all joined now_ ), because she _didn't_ have to do this. Not until he came. Not until he came. Not until he changed her course ( _and she'd seen it coming; why hadn't she stopped it?_ ), not until then.

"It's here that matters," she says. "It has to be this way," she says, because surely Merlin ( _sweet Merlin, with eyes that showed how desperately he cared, before_ ) can see that he is wrong and that Arthur is wrong and that they are all wrong, and Morgana will make it right? Surely he can see, here, in this old place, with its soul wrapping around him?

But Merlin cannot see.

And Morgana tries to show him.


End file.
